The invention relates to an apparatus for inserting a solid manure storage into a soil layer.
This type of apparatus is used in agricultural production to spread solid manure on an area for crop plant cultivation. It is generally known to spray said solid manure by means of a distributor apparatus above the soil surface thus covering the cultivation area with solid manure. This solid manure then partly seeps into the ground, i.e. its liquid content, and remains partly as top layer on the ground. Said method and apparatus for implementing said method make it possible to spread solid manure on the crop plant cultivation area in an economically feasible manner, in particular because the solid manure is dispensed from a tank through a relatively large opening and then spread by means of a centrifugal disc, centrifugal distributor or the like with a low risk of blockage, and the superficial spreading and subsequent percolation allow for a relatively favorable arrangement of the solid manure near the surface. However, said type of spreading has the disadvantage of significant odor and ammonia emissions. This type of odor emission is regulated differently according to national or supranational regulations and requirements. These regulations range from requirements regarding emission limits to requirements that only allow this type of manure spreading in connection with subsequent soil preparation for inserting the manure layer into the soil by subsequently turning the soil within a predetermined maximum period of time after spreading the manure.
Generally, spreading the manure by distributing it above the cultivation surface and subsequent insertion helps to achieve low-odor and low-ammonia insertion of solid manure into the soil. However, this procedure has the disadvantage that it is necessary to work the soil twice and to travel over the soil twice accordingly, which requires additional working time as well as additional fuel and material. In addition, it has proved a disadvantage that inserting the manure in a second step causes significant corrosion of the soil cultivation equipment due to high chemical aggressiveness.
Besides said established spreading procedures for solid manure it is meanwhile also known to insert solid manure into a soil cultivation area not by spraying it above the surface but is directly inserted into the soil to a predetermined depth. With this procedure, the outlet opening is arranged at a lower end of a soil prong which is inserted into the soil to a predetermined depth. Typically, with this procedure, the manure is spread via several such openings on accordingly several tines, which are arranged adjacently to each other with regard to a driving direction and are dragged through the soil in driving direction during soil preparation. This creates several parallel and laterally spaced manure storages in the form of several strands of solid manure which are located at a specific depth of the soil.
The advantage of this type of manure insertion is that it is almost free of emissions and thus the solid must not be worked subsequently for emission protection reasons. The disadvantage of this type of insertion is, however, the locally very limited arrangement of solid manure which, with regard to the fertilizing effect of the manure, causes a disadvantageous distribution on the soil surface and thus does not ideally support the growth of the crop plants. In particular, this type of insertion leaves a large part of the soil layer low in nutrients, while a locally very limited part of the soil is left with a too high concentration of nutrients. This is desired in some, but not in all cases. For this reason, in part for the purpose of a more favorable distribution of nutrients from the solid manure, the soil is nevertheless worked subsequently, which, however, has the above mentioned disadvantages.
Another problem of the direct insertion of the manure through several discharge openings that are inserted into the soil is the specific composition of the solid manure. While it is comparatively easy to feed such solid manure from a tank through a large discharge opening and to spray it by means of a centrifugal disk or a centrifugal distributor above the surface, spreading through several small openings is problematic, since these openings can become blocked. Since it is not possible to intensively process and homogenize the solid manure for economic reasons, it has to be dealt with the fact that during spreading, the solid manure may contain solid parts of different sizes and composition, ranging from fine fiber components to large fiber lumps, branches or pieces of branches or mineral solids of different sizes. The spreading of such solid manure from a tank is a regular problem if during the spreading, the solid manure is to be distributed from a large passage cross section to several small passage cross sections. Scientific information indicates that a finer distribution of the solid manure in the form of individual strands that are laterally spaced from each other, makes the insertion into and distribution of nutrients over the cultivation area economically advantageous. From a practical point of view, such insertion of solid manure is, however, often not reliable, since the inadequate distribution regularly leads to blockages which in turn lead to an unreasonable maintenance effort and in addition—since such local blockages cannot be identified during the spreading procedure—to an unreliable spreading.